Take out the garbage!

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

Every day - in fact, every moment - God is offering you your daily communion with Him, with the Christ, the Bread of Life, Truth, and Love. This is the Grace that feeds all those famished affections: the unfulfilled yearnings, the misguided expectations, the dashed hopes; all the loneliness, self-loathing, egotism; all the versions of "you" that don't look like God.

So take out the garbage!

You have the right to dump all the negative ego stories, the nightmare histories, the scarred past, the horrible present, or a dreaded of the future.

Maybe you might have a dream at night that you are one thing or another, rich, poor, healthy, hurt, fat, thin, lonely, friendly, saint, sinner. But whatever it is, it's a dream. When you wake up, the dream - and the dreamer - are gone, and you - who you really are - are "back."

And so it is as we awake to God.

And God is all about being awake. He stirs us to be awake to what He is knowing, to be what He is doing, to see that you really are right here and now His image and likeness: purposeful, safe, secure, abundantly cared for, powerful, whole, healthy, holy.

Notice this. See what qualities of thought - your daily bread - that God is shining in you, as you. Live on this Bread of Life. Embody it by living these qualities out loud, and you'll be waking up in His kingdom.

And you may just find yourself with enough Bread to help feed the famished affections, not only of yourself, but of all those around you.

And that will be Grace for today.

Connections

If we hallow - honor, adore - God's Name, if we truly understand His nature to be completely good, we begin to awake to and accept our role as His reflection. We experience oneness with Him, communion with Him. His Name of Grace becomes our daily Bread of Life.

Then we begin to yearn for His sovereignty, His presence, to be with us, to be within us. We yearn to be with Him, to live within His kingdom, under His authority, all the time. We glimpse our likeness to Him. We yearn to reflect His unconditional Love in us as love for His creation, as love for one another. This yearning leads to doing, to forgiving all our debtors as His love forgives ours.

Then we begin to live His Love more consciously. We see the impact it has. We feel His power being made manifest in us, as us. This awakens discernment: we taste honey and understand what's good. Then we can more easily shun the bad. Learning these lessons, how then can we be led into temptation? Knowing His Love - and living it - we are delivered from all evil, from sin, disease, and even death.

How? because He really is our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious. And His is the presence (the Kingdom), and the Christly omnipotence (the Power), and the perfect Love (the Glory), forever.

Amen.

Living "Thy will be done"

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

Last Sunday evening I was getting ready for bed, and dreading Monday morning, having to go back to a stressful job whose demands too often seem way beyond my capabilities.

And that evening, as I prayed the Lord's Prayer before turning off the light, I came to this verse: "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven" - and Mrs. Eddy's spiritual sense of it: "Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme."

And I stopped.

And this is what came to me:

So you're dreading going to work tomorrow? Turn it around! See what Love is preparing for you. See the blessing of working God's work, of being His reflection. Don't indulge in dread or unease or dis-ease about work! Rejoice to simply be His image and likeness.

Bring that rejoicing to work with you. Dissatisfaction, unease, dread, fear, laziness, willfulness, egotism are not qualities that God gives you. So don't exercise them! Be alert to this! Rejoice that you are reflection! Rejoice that you work as God works! Get ego out of the way and see what He is doing - what He is expressing through you, as you! And for heaven's sakes, be grateful!!

"Thy will be done in earth - right where I am - as it is in Heaven." God enables us to know that, as in Heaven, so on earth, He really is omnipotent, supreme. He gives you willingness, ease, joyful expectancy, energy, selflessness, gratitude. Work these! Apply these! Yield to these! That is your job.

God is relaxed, even easy-going! while being omnipotent. He does not run around wildly in a panic to get things done. He moves with majesty! With sure steps and thorough focus. He speaks and it is done. All His work is luminous and precise. All His work is effortless and relaxed - even as "light emits light without effort" - dazzilylingly effective.

And God smoothes out what needs to be smoothed. He roughs up what needs to be roughed. He stops what needs to be stopped. He starts what needs to be started. He completes what needs to be completed. He works what needs to be worked.

Why? Because His already all-harmonious will is done in earth - right where you are - exactly as it is in already all-harmonious Heaven. And He enables you to know it! and to see it! and to be it! to be His will being done, His supremecy being made manifest.

Here. Now. Ever.

The weight of personal responsibility disappears in this effortless light of reflection, in this understanding of your true place and relationship to God.

Thank You Father-Mother God for this Truth. Thank You for Your Goodness, for being the Adorable One. Thank You for enabling us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, we don't have to be omnipotent, supreme - that's Your job! But thank You for awakening us to our role as reflection - of being what You are, of seeing what You, Divine Love, have prepared for us, and in rejoicing in Your complete and effortless creation.

And thank You most of all for being here, being ever-present with us, for guiding us as we fulfill our purpose as Your children: to see what You, divine Love, have prepared.

You enable us to know that your loving work is done; that it is perfectly complete and perfectly good. And that You are omnipotent, supreme. And our job today is to simply witness Your Love, Your power, and live it, and rejoice.

Thank You Father.

You are not left out of the Kingdom of God!

"Thy kingdom come."
Thy kingdom is come. Thou art everpresent.

God is everpresent.

Do you get this? Do you accept what this means?

God is present with you.

Right here. Right now.

You begin to learn this first by learning to love God for who He really is - divine Truth, Life, Love itself.

And you practice this love for God by loving His creation: by actually sincerely loving yourself. Loving your own ego? No. Just the opposite: by loving the you God made.

In fact it's only when you put aside that little me-me-me clamoring for attention, you begin to notice - intuit even - the kingdom, the presence, of God. You hear Him telling you about every lovely God-like quality that you already embody. These qualities are God's gift to you. They awaken in you so you look like Him. So you can learn to love yourself as God made you. So you can learn to love the real you as His image and likeness.

Then, and only then, can you love another as you love yourself. Love the real them as much as you love the real you. Love the them that is God's likeness.

"Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

When you're living Love, you're in the kingdom.

Get busy.

"Our Father..."

"Our Father which art in heaven."
Our Father-Mother God all-harmonious.

"Our Father"! This is Christ Jesus talking - and he is including us - all of us - in his family. He is inviting us to accept his Father as also our Father, that we are part of His divine Family.

When Jesus said "Our" - he didn't just mean those random people who happened to be listening to him during his Sermon on the Mount. No. He's talking about the kind of "Our" that includes everyone in the universe. And so yes, that means it includes you - no matter what, no matter if you're good, bad, or indifferent. Jesus' prayer includes you.

Don't believe it?

Think about something else Jesus said about God:

"He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

That pretty much includes everyone, doesn't it?

God's love is unconditional. It pours out on everyone and everything like rain and sunlight. The only difference is in people's willingness to accept it!

So think about this first verse of Jesus' Prayer: "Our Father...." Think about what it means about God. What it means about you. What it means about how Jesus would see you right here, right now: loved, cared for, included in His family.

What a gift we all have been given by Jesus in his Word "Our Father." To know God, divine Love, as our Source, our Parent, our Heredity, our Family.

Do you feel His warm sun shining down on you? Do you feel His cool nurturing rain of Love?

Are you accepting it?

It's yours if you do.

It's even yours if you don't.

"Our Father which art in heaven."
Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, ever-present, all-inclusive, all-embracing, unconditionally Loving you right here, right now.

"Desire is prayer..."

"Our Father which art in heaven."
"Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious."

Have you ever stopped to think where your yearning for "something better, higher, holier" comes from? Have you ever stopped to realize that it comes from God?

God speaks to us through our intuition, through our yearning, through our desire. "Thoughts unspoken are not unknown to the divine Mind. Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds."

God stirs you to yearn, to wake up to your personal inability, to need to trust your desires to Him.

Why? Because no matter what other solutions you try - drugs, sex, rock-and-roll (or whatever other substitute for real fulfillment you choose) - He alone can fulfill your desire. That is because, at its root, all desire is for that "something better, higher, holier," something powerfully good, something lasting, something more than you can get or make or steal on your own. It is your desire for your oneness with God. He is stirring you - right now - to awake in His likeness, to see yourself as He always already sees you, to be what He already "be's" you!

All desire - no matter how good or bad - is a form of prayer. And the outcome of that prayer is completely based on what - or who - you trust your desires to!

Try trusting them to God. God is always stirring you to want to wake up to Him, to seek so you can find Him, to knock so He can open your heart, to ask so He can tell you "My son... you are always with me and everything I have is yours."

Our Father which art in heaven.
Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious

Seek Him. He's as close as your desire.